From The Comfort of Protective Coveralls to Intelligent Protective Gown

From the actual situation of medical staff wearing protective coveralls, comfort is more reflected in the heat and humidity transfer ability. When medical staff take off their protective suits

There are roughly 10 steps: removal site and preparation before removal, hand hygiene, removal of outer gloves, quick hand disinfection, removal of protective mask, removal of protective clothing, quick hand disinfection, hand hygiene, removal of mask, removal of inner coat. Because of its cumbersome process, medical staff generally not easy to remove.

When people move in a relatively closed space, the rate of sweating will be greatly accelerated, so medical staff often sweat excessively, and sweat will lead to extreme poor comfort. About 85% of human body heat is discharged by the skin, and what is closest to the skin is clothes, which is playing a decisive role in cooling human body. Most of the existing research focuses on the shielding properties of materials, and comfort is often sacrificed in order to obtain good barrier properties. Medical protective clothing, usually made of selective breathable membranes, meets standards but inhibits heat loss and evaporation of sweat, severely affecting the comfort of medical staff. Like other clothing, the comfort of medical protective clothes is affected by the thermal and moisture transfer performance of the material. The moisture permeability of medical protective coveralls should be greater than 2 500 g /(m2·d), which is a static index. However, it is a dynamic process for medical staff to work in medical protective gown, and the optimal water vapor transmittance required by different temperatures and physical labor is different. The water vapor transmittance required by high intensity and high temperature is greatly increased, so it should be treated in different levels. In addition, existing studies on the heat and humidity transfer performance of medical protective coveralls tend to focus on a single material or the medical protective clothing itself, but the medical personnel are not only wearing a protective clothing, but also daily work clothes and inner lining, so the comprehensive effect is not considered enough. Studies have shown that in real clothing, the moisture penetration capacity of materials between different layers is close to the principle, otherwise according to the moisture penetration efficiency from large to small, from inside to outside. Through this gradient structure, siphon effect is formed to facilitate moisture and sweat transfer of the fabric, which provides an integrated idea for improving the comfort performance of medical protective gown. In the future, the single guided wet study of medical protective coveralls can make use of differential capillary effect and wetting gradient effect to achieve single guided wet by changing fiber linear density, hydrophilicity and fiber network structure, so as to enhance the comfort performance of wearing medical protective suit for a long time.

Intellectualization has penetrated into every corner of life, but there is still no research on intellectualization in medical protective clothing at present. However, with the development of science and technology, more and more demands are put forward on medical protective coveralls, which not only requires it to provide passive protective performance, but also requires it to actively adjust the wearing temperature, monitor the protective performance and make danger warning. Therefore, intellectualization is also a key direction for the development of medical protective clothing in the future. Under the temperature difference of 5-20 ℃, the human body will lead to physiological reactions such as shortness of breath and dizziness. Phase change materials can be used to keep the temperature change within 5 ℃, which is waterproof and moisture permeable material with temperature regulation function. It absorbs heat in hot environment and releases heat in cold environment. The intelligent waterproof and moisture permeable material can automatically adjust its air permeability and moisture permeability according to the external temperature to prevent the internal temperature of medical protective cloth from rising and causing hypoxia due to poor air permeability and moisture permeability. Or reference to the current intelligent clothing, can use conductive fiber and cladding material for testing to provide early warning, by qualitative or quantitative detection such as color change to wear protective clothing to carry the virus or bacteria, and can be connected through sensors and medical protective clothing, temperature, gas monitoring, the real-time transmission of data to a remote monitoring on electronic devices such as mobile phone screen.